"Put money in thy purse..."

When people think of Shakespeare, they think of elevated language and coffee shops with pretentious snobs perusing shelves of literature and "good" poetry. I think this is a sad and false association. Historians have concluded that Shakespeare was a writer who worked for the entertainment of the common people. He is definitely one of, if not the definitively best, writers of the English language, but first and foremost he was an entertainer.
You may be wondering where I'm heading with this haphazard defense of a dead man's honor, but it's because I've become increasingly interested with one of his most "evil" characters, and he deserves the defense anyways.
The character is Iago, the one who pours poison in the ears of all the characters in Othello. He comes across at the beginning of the play as a villain, but nothing more than your typical evil-doer moving along the plot of your familiar Shakespearean tragedy; he is much more than that. After his first soliloquy, you find yourself asking, "What the hell is this guy up to? And why?" And you do never get a clear answer, which is partly frustrating and partly just the beauty of Shakespeare. As you can tell, I have a habit of becoming overly-acquainted with the characters I read about. I don't even know why.
Below is a scene from Othello with Iago's first monologue performed by Kenneth Branagh. He's excellent. Enjoy.